Sideshow @ Filmhouse

Torsten Lauschmann’s Sideshow is a performance work that continues in the same experimental vein as his currently exhibited Patchwork Cinema Compilation 1. Here he eschews more traditional linear narratives for his own brand of recycled cinema, focusing instead on coherencies of rhythm and atmosphere. This time we are offered many bizarre delights, including a phantasmagorical horse of static superimposed onto a flat trapezium omitting white noise as it rolls wildly; and also a couple, their faces entirely composed of numbers and textual symbols (?*#) singing a reworked electronic mambo, their romance shown in strings of numeric code that blur, destabilise, then explode joyfully to the music. Lauschmann here imbues abstract geometry and technology with visually inventive and emotionally charged human traits, skilfully proving his penchant for accessible, formal experimentalism personified in humour, never dry or elitist.

This playfulness and inclusivity was demonstrated off screen in Patchwork through a communal, carnivalesque cinema space. In Sideshow, Lauschmann manages to overcome what he himself considers the homogenous, sanitised space of western cinema (apologies to the Edinburgh Filmhouse) through an imaginative use of soundscapes and , significantly, mobile phones – perhaps the enemy of today’s cinema experience. In silence, an obscured, colourful picture is broken up and filtered through geometric prisms, forcing the viewer to try and piece it together. A tawdry, flashing phone number graphic scrolls across the screen urging us to call. Tentative looks are shared amongst the audience until a brave spectator clandestinely pulls out their mobile and dials, followed by others who furtively copy, passing phones between friends discreetly, as if at school. Soon most have giggled at the jungle loop audio track that completes the visuals on screen. Lauschmann urges us to question the serious problem of the isolating and anesthetizing nature of the modern cinema but he does it through mischievous humour and we’re all invited to join in the joke.

Perhaps the highlight of Sideshow as recycled cinema is Lauschmann’s short surreal horror story about a woman fleeing a psychopathic murderer, composed entirely of film titles. The names of the films form the narrative, while the visuals and audio from the title sequences set the mood, that of a comical, cartoonish nightmare: “Hello Dolly!”/I Eat Your Skin”/(he shouted) Aroused, (yes, the latter two are genuine feature films; looking them up is optional if not ill-advised). Of course, the individual titles are the creations of other artists or directors, however, it is the pre-existing nature of the title sequences, woven together, that makes the story hilarious, absurd and undeniably Lauschmann’s. Though this is a very successful element of Sideshow, overall its sister piece, Patchwork Cinema Compilation 1, achieves greater narrative and atmospheric coherency. Sideshow plays more like a disjointed sequence of shorts. Despite this, Lauschmann’s manifesto of inclusivity, experimentalism and intextuality is clear and enjoyable throughout, consistently displaying his desire to return to the carnivalesque playfulness of early cinema through an embracing and humanising of contemporary technology.

If you didn’t manage to catch Sideshow, Lauschmann’s exhibition Patchwork Cinema is still running @ Edinburgh’s Collective until Sun 18 Jul. My advice is to go see it. Now.